For decades the US has sought to prevent China’s rise, and the Philippines is becoming its “Ukraine” in Asia: the South China Sea conflict is engineered in Washington, not Manila.
This has manifested itself through outright US military occupation and war inside China before and after the World Wars as well as proxy wars (the Korean War and the Vietnam War), and the arming and backing of a separatist administration on the Chinese island province of Taiwan — all aimed at containing China’s rise during and following the Cold War.
This is in addition to the economic war the US has waged on China attempting to disrupt its development at home and its trade worldwide. This is achieved through restrictions, sanctions, and tariffs, as well as high-profile provocations like the arrest of Chinese citizens and Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou in 2018, but also the outright disruption of maritime shipping and attempts to undermine China’s economy through the targeting of global energy supplies.
These efforts continue today — targeting China both directly and indirectly.
The US is Already at War with China
The US proxy war on Russia in Ukraine is aimed at overextending and collapsing one of China’s closest strategic allies.
The US has also targeted China’s largest source of imported energy — West Asia — with US war being waged on Iran directly and the predictable fallout of the conflict affecting energy exports from the rest of the region’s energy exporters.
Before launching the US war of aggression against Iran in West Asia, the US violently overthrew the government of Venezuela, ceasing energy exports to China and instead repurposing the nation’s energy resources to bolster US “energy dominance” as leverage over China.
The disruption of energy exports to China from Latin America to Eurasia has not only impacted China’s own energy resources but that of wider Asia which comprises China’s largest and most important trading market. By undermining the economic stability of China’s trade partners, the US is indirectly undermining China’s trade with its trade partners.
As part of a more direct campaign of aggression against China — the US currently backs a number of non-state actors across Eurasia including terrorists in Pakistan’s Baluchistan region and Myanmar implementing a stated US strategy (and here) of cutting China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) which includes severing alternative land routes for energy exports to China meant to circumvent potential US naval blockades in and around Asian waters.
These US-sponsored attacks have damaged or destroyed Chinese investments and killed Chinese citizens, including one attack that even targeted China’s ambassador to Pakistan in 2021.
As this multidomain war is waged against China politically, economically, and militarily worldwide, the US is preparing to expand operations even further still.
The Philippines: The “Ukraine” of Southeast Asia
For years the US has attempted to prevent China from militarily deterring the threat of US containment and aggression — particularly through potential blockades — in and around the South China Sea by contesting China’s maritime claims and attempting to disrupt China from fortifying the region against US encroachment and aggression.
To do so, the US has invested deeply in politically compromising or capturing the governments of claimants in South China Sea territorial disputes – especially the Philippines — and transforming what are isolated points of bilateral contention (contention not only between Southeast Asian claimants and China, but also among all of these claimants themselves) — into potential regional or global conflicts.
This includes creating entire institutions dedicated to creating and influencing narratives regarding South China Sea disputes as well as expanding both the US military’s presence in the Philippines and the military capabilities of the Philippines itself.
While the US pushes a narrative across the Philippines’ captured information space that “China” poses a threat to Philippine sovereignty — it is the Philippines’ own former colonial master the United States (1898-1946) occupying Philippine territory with US troops – not “China.”
This mirrors the multi-year process the US undertook in politically capturing and transforming the Eastern European nation of Ukraine into an armed battering ram now being destroyed in proxy war with neighboring Russia.
The US seeks to continue its many points of pressure against China worldwide along with threatening or triggering a more direct major armed conflict with China itself just as it has done with both Russia and Iran.
In order to sell such a conflict with China, the US funds and uses organizations like Sealight and the institutions which created it to shape the self-destructive policies of confronting China for the Philippines and the global media narratives used to sell such policies to the wider global public.
The US Government-Funded Fronts Pushing the Philippines Toward US Proxy War
Sealight claims on its “About” page that it, “uses commercially available technology to shed light on the maritime “gray zone”—that is, things that happen at sea that someone would rather the public not know about.”
However, it is exclusively fixated on China and China alone — with a clear mandate to create the political pretext required to spend more on military power in the United States vis-à-vis China and for US proxies in Asia to not only spend more specifically to confront China, but to surrender more of their own territory and national resources to an expanding US military footprint within their borders.
As critics have pointed out Sealight’s obvious politically motivated agenda and its US government-funding to pursue it, Sealight has attempted to cover up its funding and true intentions.
In a post on its website last year written by Sealight director Ray Powell himself, it was claimed:
“For nearly three years, China’s state propagandists and its proxies have been working hard to frame SeaLight (and its predecessor, Project Myoushu) as a well-funded instrument of America’s military-industrial complex. These charges have been especially amusing to our all-volunteer cadre, many of whom must by now be wondering where I’m hiding all those defense and intelligence dollars.”
It should be noted that Powell never actually denies the fact that Sealight is a well-funded instrument of America’s military-industrial complex. He simply jokes in a way as to imply this isn’t true, but even a cursory look into Sealight’s background reveals the project to be exactly a product of US government — and specifically military — influence.
Sealight also claims on its “About” page, “SeaLight was started by a team of volunteers at Stanford University’s Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation, which uses entrepreneurial methods to solve difficult defense and security challenges.”
The Stanford University’s Gordian Knot Center was itself created by the US government and through the US Navy specifically, according to the US Navy’s own official website in an announcement titled, “Unraveling ‘Knotty’ Problems: ONR Helps Launch New Academic Center for National Security Innovation,” admitting:
“Recognizing the modern need for bold answers to complex naval challenges, the Office of Naval Research (ONR) has sponsored the creation of Stanford University’s Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation (GKC)—a new academic center dedicated to helping the U.S. government re-envision its approach to national security issues.”
The Gordian Knot Center — with US government — and specifically US Navy funding — has helped shape continued US efforts to encircle, contain, and confront China within its own borders in the Asia-Pacific, and specifically stood up Sealight as part of doing so.
The US Naval Institute in a 2023 article titled, “Lighting Up the Maritime Gray Zone,” refers to Sealight specifically as an answer to solving the US government and military’s “security dilemma” — not off the coasts of US territory — but in the South China Sea off China’s coasts.
The same article reveals the actual objective of Sealight is to generate media headlines and shape social media narratives — not only across the Western media but targeting and manipulating the information space of the Philippines itself.
All of these headlines and narratives are then utilized by the rest of the US government, including during US Congressional hearings, by US foreign policy think tanks, and of course by the whole weight of US government-funded propaganda in the Philippines including US-funded outlets like Rappler which has an entire section of its website dedicated to “Philippines-China Relations” filled entirely with articles promoting confrontation with Beijing over the South China Sea and specifically citing (and here) Sealight while doing so.
In other words – every aspect of this supposed “Philippine” national security issue is being shaped and directed in Washington D.C., not Manila — and to serve US interests at the Philippines’ expense in exactly the same way the US shaped the current war in Ukraine ravaging Ukraine’s economy, stripping it of its territory, driving out its population, and risking its very existence.
The narratives are created and perpetuated by US-based US government-funded organizations and institutions, amplified within the Philippines domestic information space by likewise US government-funded outlets like Rappler to mislead the Philippine public into an otherwise unnecessary confrontation with China — the Philippines’ largest and most important trade partner — and at the expense of Philippine-Chinese cooperation in regard to desperately needed modern infrastructure.
Beyond that, the threat of conflict undermines regional peace and stability both China and the Philippines require prospering.
The Philippines is already paying a steep cost for its subordination to and use by the United States as a proxy in the region. Despite having a population of 117 million+ people to Thailand’s 71 million people (45 million more people) — the Philippines has a much lower GDP than Thailand (GDP Per Capita (Nominal) Philippines $4,619, Thailand $8,372, GDP Per Capita (PPP) Philippines $11,794, Thailand $27,724).
Thailand enjoys a much closer relationship with China including immense trade, tourism, joint-infrastructure projects, joint defense training and military industrial production, and greater internal political stability and quality of life than the Philippines specifically because the US’ many attempts to politically capture Thailand have failed where it has succeeded in the Philippines.
As the window of opportunity for the US to reassert primacy over the world and prevent the irreversible surpassing of the US by China closes – the US and its proxies continue speeding toward the cliff of a Ukraine-style proxy war in the Asia-Pacific with the Philippines and the Chinese island province of Taiwan the two most likely epicenters of such a conflict.
It is a conflict that will not only destroy these US proxies and undermine China, it will destablize and destroy the Asia-Pacific region just as Europe is in terminal decline amid the US proxy war with Russia in Ukraine.
Understanding who is behind growing Philippine-Chinese tensions and why — that it is a wholly US conflict engineered by and directed from and for Washington — is the first step toward informing both the Philippine population and the wider global public.
Failing to do so invites more US war — war that will harm the entire world immensely — just as the globe has suffered from other US proxy wars and outright wars in Eastern Europe and West Asia — all of which are part of US efforts to cling to primacy and contain China in the process.
Brian Berletic is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer
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